


A Stain, A Splinter

by Sarasti



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Body Horror, Gen, M/M, etc - Freeform, generally unsettling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:27:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28577499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarasti/pseuds/Sarasti
Summary: They thought they had moved out into the forest to find safety, beauty and peace, but what found them there turned all their plans to ruin.
Relationships: Armin Arlert & Eren Yeager, Armin Arlert/Eren Yeager
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	A Stain, A Splinter

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably my most self-indulgent fanfic yet, which is really saying something. Feedback is always appreciated, etc.

An ancient and sacred tree lay in the town square, deserted in the late afternoon. Two boys on the cusp of adulthood had unwittingly gathered there, one of them leaning on its trunk, his teeth lining an apple. He heard a rustling sound from the branches above and turned up to look, shocked to see a dark-haired boy his own age with a slight grin on his mouth. The tree-one reached a hand down to the blond one, motioning to join him up in the branches. At first he was apalled – he was disrespecting centuries of important tradition! - but something in him told him not to pass on the opportunity. That was the first act of their partnership in crime. Since then, their roots only grew further and further intertwined, twisting themselves around each other until they formed a tight knot, difficult to tell which thin wire or thick root belonged to which tree. They stayed up there till long after sundown and snuck into the dark-haired one’s house after that. His father was always somewhere else, even when he was in the house. The blond one envied the other for this, as well as for many other reasons.

It wasn’t long after that that they made a cut in each other’s fingers, intermingling their essences and tying themselves to each other. Together, they would feel no fear. No obstacle was too great for them to overcome. The rumors went that the abandoned district of their town was haunted, its streets visited by the restless dead after the sun dropped beneath the peaks that surrounded it. They climbed over the solid brick wall one misty autumn day, covered up with coats and scarves to protect themselves from the chilly mountain winds. The narrow streets were lined by the hollowed-out shells of businesses and living quarters, but no one except for the two of them could be seen. Behind a fence of corrugated iron lay an abandoned manor house. The lock of the gate had rusted and the dark one kicked it open without effort. In the entrance hall, he bumped into an old sculpture of a sea-god and would have broken it hadn’t the blond one been there to catch it mid-fall.

In the bedroom of one of the sons of the house, they found a closet containing clothes much less moth-bitten than the rest in the house and tried them on. They were too big for the blond, but he thought the other looked quite dashing in a long overcoat, cravat and pointed hat. In the master library, the blond stole a big book of alchemy and discovered a secret doorway that opened by pulling the spine of a book titled “ _Muraenesox_ And Other Great And Terrific Inhabitants Of The Sea”. The dark one pushed him against the wall then, and they would have defiled that sober place even further had they not heard footsteps coming from the bedroom above and down the stairs. They made a run for it until they discovered that it had only been a stray dog that had gotten in through the door they had left open. The mood was nonetheless ruined and they started to make their way home, happy with what they had found but mildly disappointed that nothing had actually been haunted and that they were just living in a tired old town whose flowering days were long since past.

* * *

The years went by, and the string they had tied around each other held even as the scenery changed and they went from students in secondary school to students in college to workers, and they switched from their decrepit home to a big and bustling city by a swift river. Armin began working as an alchemist, wanting to understand matter itself. He made the duty-bound failed attempts to turn lead into gold before giving up and pointing his mind towards more practical matters. Eren became a spear, always honing his skills with swords, daggers and muskets. He joined groups of hunters in their journeys and stood guard for visiting nobles and merchants. When their days were done or on the weekends, they walked endlessly through the city and the surrounding country, sleeping under the stars during the summer and in hidden-away inns in the winter. They were both skilled, motivated and in-demand at their jobs, and both wanted to get away from them so they could spend more time with each other.

As they neared the end of their twenties, they had grown tired of the city. All the noise, the panopticon of eyes that always saw you from the moment you stepped out the door, people and events happening everywhere. They were greedy and wanted more space to spread out on. Their search led them away from the human-hive by the river. Upstream, the river led into a hilly land of misty forests and valleys dotted by small towns and villages. It was sparsely populated and possessed an absence of human noise that allowed all the sounds of nature to break through, but it was still close enough to the city to allow them to make errands there without spending days traveling. One part of the area was almost completely unpopulated. It was made out of thick woods and cliffs of chalk that loomed over the river. Some said that an entire village had been left to rot in there some 100 years ago, that the deers there had horns on the inside. Not listening to the wagging tongues of foolish farmers and woodsmen, they scouted it for unclaimed land and soon found an absolutely charmingly wonderful cottage by a slow-moving stream in a flat area in a sparse oak forest. It was a fixer-upper for sure, but it was perfect for two youths who did not want for much luxury. They checked at the nearest notary and, indeed, there were no claims on that parcel of land. They could move in right away, and they did. Armin could make trips into the city to take comissions from learned folk, returning to the cottage to mix healing potions and do scholarly work for the colleges. Eren joined the local hunters in exchange for meat and escorted travellers through this ill-reputed land. They always had enough to go by and grew vegetables and a herbal garden and hunted wild animals. The city was no longer pressuring them and they calmed down, enjoying the sounds of birds and of wind rustling in the trees and each other’s bare presence. The lack of other humans to interact with made them wind themselves even more tightly around each other, which for this already devoted pair was very tight indeed.

All around their small cottage, life was flourishing in the absensce of Man.

* * *

Eren was by nature given to obsession and fixation on a single target. He was not inclined to do anything half-way: It was all or nothing. He once chopped down a tree and cut it into pieces just to prove that he could. His whole body ached after that, but it was worth it. He had one enduring obsession: Armin Arlert, and other smaller ones that he cycled through. He wanted to reach the apex of his potential as a warrior, wanting to push his body and mind to their limits. In case any _threat_ to their splendid lifestyle appeared, and threats were always lurking in the shadows, he wanted to be strong enough to dispose of it quickly and effectively. The world was full of dangers and the only way to deal with them was to be as vicious to them as they were to you. The sordid business of negotiation and mutual understanding was for other people to bother with – he had his role and he felt no need to step out of it.

Armin was more of a generalist. Almost anything could catch his interest. He wasn’t quite happy with the idea of staying put in one place for all time – it wasn’t really anything specific that compelled him to branch out, he just wanted to broaden himself for its own sake. He read novels and encyclopedias, books about distant lands and of animal and plant life. He wanted to know and learn of all that was.

To say that this never caused friction in their relationship would be a lie. Armin sometimes couldn’t deal with Eren’s overattachment and had to go out into the woods by himself or meeting a colleague in town just to have something to occupy his mind with other than Eren, Eren, Eren. Eren never seemed to have this problem – he could spend every waking second with Armin without being worse for the wear. The only times he didn’t was when he was fighting something – Armin did not belong in combat situations. Other than that, it was all Armin, all the time. Maybe this was an imbalance of a kind, but it was one they managed.

One day, the spring after they had moved, two well-known soldiers from the prince’s guard came travelling through. They were on their way to meet up with another contingent of soldiers in the nearest town by the river, and checked in to a tavern while they waited. Eren, like anyone interested in the practice of warfare, had heard of them long before and would try his best to meet them to spar and try to learn their tricks. Levi and Mikasa Ackerman were the best of the best – clearly related but nobody he spoke to ever knew how, exactly – and to even reach a stalemate with them was a sign of a worthy fighter indeed.

The only available word for the results was _humiliating_. Eren returned home with a swollen eye and bruised arm. As Armin patched him up and caressed him, he thought it had all been a sign – he had grown too cocky. He was successful in his own area of expertise in this backwater place, but out there all creation was crawling with things that could overpower him, outsmart him, beat him into the dirt and take everything from him. Despite all his efforts, he was a mediocrity. Not so pathetic that he couldn’t stand on his own at all, but compared to real masters he was nothing.

One week after that, when the wounds from his sparring session hadn’t quite healed, Armin was robbed while riding home from the city in a horse-drawn carriage. Another alchemist had joined him since they were going the same way. By a shaded twist in the dirt road, they were ambushed by the infamous Band of Seven, and there was nothing for them to do but to hand over everything they carried. Armin didn’t have too much money on him to lose, but the thieves had beaten his stomach and twisted his arm to show that they weren’t messing around. He was happy to make it out alive but was clearly shaken by the event as he staggered into the cabin much later than he said he would. Now it was his turn to get his wounds tended to by his concerned partner. They’d get by, but it seemed like their streak of luck was ending. Now all the dark out there was beginning to seep through the walls. Eren could live with his own injuries - he _had_ brought them on himself – but this… He’d never let Armin make the journey into the city without him again, no matter his protestations. What would happen if the bandits weren’t happy with just his property next time what if they hurt him even more what if there were even worse people than bandits out there what if absolutely nowhere was safe anymore and it would all just come crashing down around them like so many loose rocks.

* * *

The night after that, a voice whispered something in Eren’s ear just as he started to drift into sleep. Startled, he turned over to see if someone had gotten into the cabin, but there was no one there.

* * *

Armin on the porch, the morning light through the trees.

“Eren, I know you feel bad about what happened to me yesterday, but it’s not that bad, all things considered...”

“How can you say that? You could have _died_.”

“Bandits usually don’t kill people. If they murdered everyone they came across there wouldn’t be anyone left to rob. Our country is not at war, so the risk of getting killed by random passersby is very small.”

“I admit that, but it still exists. And you could get killed by a wild animal – there are bears and wolves in these woods. And there’s diseases, and just because we’re not at war right now doesn’t mean we won’t be tomorrow. And our work could dry up so we’d go broke, or you might drown as a boat sinks if you take a boat to the city to avoid the roads. There’s so much danger out there, it kills me to think about it.”

“There are a lot of beautiful things out there, too. All of what you say is true, but you’ll go crazy if you think about everything that could go wrong all the time. Just getting to live in this place is a privilege that few people will ever know.”

“I know I should only think about what I have the power to change and all that stuff you’ve told me is in those philosophy books of yours, but I can’t help but think of the other side of the coin. I wish I could just make the future certain so we wouldn’t have to think about it. All the things I can’t do… I want to make it all right but I can’t even protect the one I love the most.”

“No one has the power to make the future certain. No one ever will either. It’s harsh, but there’s nothing any of us can do about it other than accept things as they are.” Armin looked up at Eren.

“And we’ve managed to create so much for ourselves. Don’t fret it all away thinking of what _isn’t_ happening. As long as we’re both here, we’ll figure everything out. Okay? I’ll always be with you, so don’t worry too much…”

"You're right, Armin. You're always so damn right about everything..."

* * *

_don’t you ever wish that you were more than you are_

_have you ever thought of what you could do if you were actually strong_

_look at those two soldiers, how easily they beat you into the ground like you’re nothing_

_before you came along, armin got attacked by bullies and now by bandits. how can you claim that anything has changed_

_the possibility of not being such a **weakling** is out there, should you wish to grab it_

_why should you deny yourself of anything, you've both suffered enough_

* * *

Eren had always been inadequate. He couldn’t stop his mother from wasting away from that awful disease as a child. He couldn’t excel academically like Armin did and was only a mediocre fighter at best – there was a reason he’d never been recruited into a guild of professionals, and most labor he performed without much joy or noteworthy skill. Despite his obsessive nature, he seemed to lack the talent to get any good at much of anything. So it seemed to him, anyway.

The time for that was over. He refused to be beaten into the ground ever again.

He started training obsessively. He certainly had the time. He committed to a rigorous schedule of early morning runs, a strict diet and constant sparring. He persuaded the chief of the guard of the nearest town to let him train with him, not missing a single appointment and always begging for more. When he didn’t train, he looked for physical labor and performed that just as rigorously. Some days, Armin barely saw him since he was so busy with all his appointments, but when they did meet, Eren was even clingier than usual. Armin would barely get any words out before Eren got going on him. He knew well by then that Eren would periodically go through these phases of really intense interest in something, and he liked seeing him so dedicated, but sometimes he wished that Eren could realize that Armin didn’t ask nearly so much of him as he asked of himself.

* * *

_what are you thinking, exposing yourselves to danger like this,_ _out in the woods full of predators and poisonous snakes and spiders_ _, it’s all going to end in tears_

_i can give you power, i can make sure your future is always secure_

_no worries will ever be had again. all you need to do is to_ _**let me in** _

* * *

One night, Eren stood outside the cottage under the full moon, wearing nothing, half-dreaming. He registered the cold wet grass under his feet as his legs moved of their own accord, taking him deeper into the forest. It was late spring and the nights were still cold, but it seemed like his semi-awake state prevented him from freezing as the forest became denser around him. He was completely lost – he could only hope that the strange impulse that compelled him to move forward would also bring him back to his starting point. The stem of a huge, ancient oak appeared before him. The moonlight revealed an opening, the size and roughly oblong shape of which would allow a grown man to squeeze through without much difficulty. Only darkness lay inside, but he knew he had no choice but to go in.

Despite the lack of illumination, he could see perfectly clear. The stem created a small chamber, in the floor of which lay a shallow pool of water(?). In it, something that looked like a pale, thin eel lay, only half-submerged. Its small narrow eyes red like rubies. The pool looked much too small for it to have any chance of moving around in. There was only one thing left to do before he could return to his warm home. He picked it up, it’s skin wet and slimy, his grip had to be careful in order not to drop it.

He brought it up to his face, opened his mouth, and nearly choked as it moved down the sides of his throat, the lining of his stomach.

He returned home in the early morning. Armin had never noticed he was gone.

* * *

_Later._

“I just feel so _happy_ , Armin. Just look at what I can do.” Pointing his right index finger at one of the wicker chairs they’d put out on the porch. It immediately made a smooth motion up into the air and stayed in place 3 meters above the ground, as if it was attached to an immense thread that somebody had pulled.

“I didn’t realize it until now, but I really haven’t felt this good in years. I think our problems might be over now, all thanks to this thing.” Armin, for once, had no idea what to say or think. This was something entirely new – not just to him, but to all human knowledge as far as he had heard. He could only stare in disbelief as his lover of almost a decade demonstrated abilities beyond the realm of physical possibility.

“Eren, what even happened... What _did_ you do to be able to do this?”

“I followed a voice I heard in my dreams and made a pact with a creature in the woods. Look, it’s not all that important – what is is what I’ll be able to do with it. Think fast, Armin!” This time, Armin was the one being pointed at. He felt his feet lift off the ground as he was pulled several meters off the ground by an unknown force. If he were to suddenly drop, the pain would be excruciating.

“Eren, stop this! This isn’t funny, put me down right now!” Eren’s gleeful face first remained the same, then turned into a confused look of worry. Armin gently descended back to the mainland.

“I’m sorry, I thought you’d enjoy that… You always said you liked reading stories where people fly...”

“Not when it happens completely without warning and I’m in danger of grave injury! I’ve never heard of anyone doing what you’re doing in all my years of study. What _was_ that thing you met?”

“Something very old and very special that chose me and only me for its host.”

Armin crossed his arms, thinking.

“I think we should go to the university. Something like that is too powerful to remain hidden away with only us knowing about it. It might revolutionize our understanding of the very laws of physics.”

Eren froze at that, as if Armin had told him he should stab his own mother to death and sell her remains in the market. He pulled Armin into a tight embrace like he usually did whenever either of them was feeling bad. Armin could hear a bird chirping somewhere far away as his other senses were suddenly all full of Eren – touch, sight, smell. Eren hadn’t bathed in a while and the nightly excursion had made him sweaty.

“Shh shh shh… Don’t say that just yet. Once they’d get their hands on me, they’d never let go. I’d spend all day being experimented on by a bunch of eggheads. We wouldn’t be able to live for ourselves like we do now. And besides, do you really think they’d be great at handling a power like this? Isn’t it better that we’re more careful about who we show it to until we know more about how it works?” His left arm snaked around him, touching Armin’s shoulder blade. The other on the side of his waist.

“Ugh, you have a point, but I think it’s selfish to let a discovery like this go unnoticed. Actual magic is the stuff of fairy tales – or at least it was.”

“Then let’s be selfish. If nothing like this has been seen before, it wouldn’t matter if it remained undiscovered for another month or two, right? The world can wait.” He started moving his right hand up and down that part of Armin’s waist where he knew he was softer than usual.

“Going to the scholars would mean giving the house up, would mean giving _this_ up. Would you really want that when we’ve only just got here?”

Armin sighed. For more than one reason.

“Alright, then… The summer solstice is about a month away, we’ll go to the university then. Until then, let’s keep this to ourselves...”

“Always the compromiser, my dear.”

“Someone has to be.”

* * *

The days went by. Eren was as obsessive as always, devoting his days to mastering his newfound powers. Armin followed along most of the time to observe and take notes, having cut down his normal workload severely. He thought the first phases were very important and that the scholars they’d eventually go to would appreciate his thorough observations. Eren started by levitating smaller objects – chairs, saucepans, bushes, small rocks – until graduating to larger ones – entire trees of pine and oak, huge boulders of an abandoned quarry, making the water of the stream by their house twist into serpentine shapes in the air. He quickly discovered that the power was neither omnipotent nor inexhaustible. He tried thinking about a piece of lead Armin had turning into gold, but at best he could only split it into a million tiny pieces. It seemed like he could only rearrange matter that was already there, not create anything new or transform the very essence of things. The power of a God, this was not.

A week or so after his communion under the oak, he attempted to move a boulder that squeezed the road to the nearest town between itself and the river, making passage difficult. It only barely lifted off the ground before he felt all his limbs slacken as he passed out into delirium, his nose bleeding. Armin had to drag his passed-out boyfriend back to the house by himself, and when he was lucid again he was ravenously hungry. That night, he slept like a dead man for 16 hours. When he woke up again, he felt cold and sweaty like he had the night it had started.

Soon after that, he took Armin flying. Under the full moon, Eren carried Armin in his arms as they soared above the forest and the river, making great arcs through the air. The people down below would whisper of them as witches or remnants of The Wild Hunt. Armin wanted to lean into Eren’s warm embrace and forget about everything else. He could lie forever in the grasp of those sinewy limbs. He could melt into him.

* * *

Eren thought Armin was so beautiful leaning into the chair on the porch, wrapped in a blanket. Instead of wearing a frown, hunched over a desk, his face was slack, his posture relaxed. He was beautiful in most modes - lying down, his limbs making no resistance, walking through the woods with light steps and open eyes. Those notes of his were lying in some desk drawer and hadn’t been touched for a while. He didn’t have to do anything - his insistence of writing everything down had slowed his exploration of his telekinesis anyway. Simply existing there was enough for Eren. He sometimes thought of using his telekinesis on him as an experiment, but he hadn’t mastered enough precision to be sure not to hurt him. Armin pushed himself so hard normally, to see him like this was a blessing.

Armin thought Eren looked so radiant as he sat on the small staircase down to the garden, carving a wooden figure with a knife without a shirt on. It was the height of summer and the heat made you slow no matter your strength of will. He let Eren out of his sight more often by now. Writing everything down didn’t seem all that necessary anymore. Surely their experiments were well-documented enough by now, surely he had earned some rest. He couldn’t remember the last time he had gone into town or bothered opening his mail. It probably didn’t matter – he could go there when he wanted. And those people who had written to him could quite frankly wait. He didn’t want for much, just to feel Eren’s tongue force its way down his throat, nearly making him gag. The summer heat (and something else?) was making his normally hyperactive brain simmer down and it was a blessing, a dream…

One day, Armin noticed the darkness approaching notably earlier than he remembered it doing. When night arrived, it was deeper than the never quite black nights of some weeks prior. Had the summer solstice already gone by? It was getting so hard to keep track of time. The calendar on the wall had disappeared – where had it gone? He could draw up his own on a piece of paper, but he needed to know what day it was first. He also wasn’t sure where those notes had gone. The last time he had looked in the desk drawer he was sure he’d put them in, they weren’t there. Oh well, they were surely going to turn up again eventually. He would ask Eren about it if he could remember it. Eren had started to take care of everything. It was so sweet of him. Cooking now happened without effort – Eren merely waved his arms around and their soup made itself. Same thing with cleaning and gardening and everything else. Eren had gotten hold of a large sum of money too – he said it was from taking on a job delivering sensitive goods for a rich merchant, and Armin didn’t feel like prying. So no work was getting done by him, he could just lounge around and enjoy himself. The days were spent sleeping in very late, watching Eren practice cleaving trees in half with pure thought. He was getting very good at it, and he’d spoken of leaving the forest soon. The world out there was huge and teeming with things. Marble palaces full of gold objects, of delicious food and paintings of flowers. Why should they have to restrain themselves to living in this dingy forest if so much else existed? They shouldn’t have to restrain themselves from _anything_. They had worked hard all their lives and come across this power. What harm was there in indulging themselves for once?

All of it was too good for words, but Armin’s very favorite times were when they made love. Then that stupid voice in the back of his head went quiet for once. The one that persisted in telling him _none of this bodes well_ _, pay attention, what_ _did you learn about the nature of energy_. As usual, he often felt like Eren was eating him, like he was in the grip of a torturer. There was nothing he could do to fend him off. Eren knew him so well by now that his attempts at putting up defense were futile – all his techniques were known to him. The heat made his attempts at resistance even weaker than normal – he couldn’t stop his voice from crying out at Eren’s assaults, his back from arching as the man he had loved for a decade moved his fingers around his insides. He cupped Eren’s face with one hand and brought it to his own as the other man continued to work on him, and Eren claimed Armin’s mouth as his own as Armin quickly lost the last remnants of composure he didn’t know he had left. When they were lying in bed afterwards, Armin already missing feeling Eren inside of him, he thought that all those people out there should probably consider themselves unlucky that the role to stop this man had fallen on him.

* * *

Armin heard the door gently click shut, light footsteps making their way down on the ground. He quickly climbed out of bed and dressed himself in a dark hooded cloak. The full moon was out again. W _hich date is it anyway? It’s getting chilly…_

He followed Eren as close by as he dared, hiding behind trees when he made stops as he swiftly made his way through the forest. _Why oh why Eren, why did you have to fall in love with me, why couldn’t you choose someone who wasn’t obsessed with learning and knowing everything…_

He was starting to recognize his surroundings – this was the woods right nearby the road that went between the large city they had left and the much smaller one they were now living outside. He could hear the river making its way down to the sea somewhere in the distance. Eren stopped behind a large tree some 10 meters off the road. He stood, and waited.

Time passed. Armin could feel his hands grow cold and had to rub his palms together to heat them up. Something new turned up on the edge of his visual field. A small spot of light, gently moving from the direction of the larger city towards the smaller one. Towards the both of them. Once it had gotten close enough to see its source, he felt anxiety slowly building up in his veins.

It was a lantern, carried by a lone wanderer. It was hard to tell, but it looked like who carried it was a woman a bit older than them – in her 30s or 40s, maybe. When she neared where Eren was standing, all of Armin’s fears were confirmed. He jumped right on top of her in one large leap, pressing her down with both his own strength and presumably his telekinesis. She didn’t stand a chance as he pushed his face onto her neck, and Armin could hear a crack (her spine?) as his lover did whatever it was he had to do. He ran back to their house as fast as he dared, knowing the burden of responsibility that had fallen on him and hating the fact that he had received it with every fiber of his being.

Eren had made two big mistakes: falling in love with an alchemist, and then spending every waking moment with him. Armin had seen _something_ make Eren’s stomach twitch at times. It only lasted for a couple seconds at most, but it most definitely looked like something moved around the insides of his stomach. He was too perceptive not to notice, and too in love not to put it out of his mind. Still, it was clear that whatever was granting Eren his powers was both: 1: Something that came from outside of him and could be expelled, and 2: Located in his stomach. Armin had grown ingredients for all sorts of potions in his herbal garden. Including a sleeping potion, strong enough to knock out a horse. He also knew of a potion of vomiting, made for making sick patients in hospitals empty the contents of their stomach, expelling all sources of poison. He’d first feed Eren a sleeping potion – easy to do, he had one ready to go in his cupboard – and then he’d make the one of vomiting, trying to calibrate its strength so it wouldn’t hurt Eren too badly. Armin was squeamish by nature and felt bad for subjecting his lover to such an experience, but maybe he shouldn't have done all this in the first place if he didn't want such treatment.

* * *

Energy could neither be destroyed nor created, only converted. Whatever had given Eren his powers didn’t keep its heart beating by eating and drinking or photosynthesis or whatever other lifeforms did. What made it tick was the _impetum vitae_ of other living beings, their very animating force. Life energy in exchange for movement energy. Armin could only shudder as he thought of what would happen if they brought this power to the outside world. If its source was a creature, there might very well be more, and they might very well breed. Soon almost anyone might get a magical eel of their very own – or they might get hoarded by the rich and powerful. Either way the results were terrible.

Vast forces of kinesis, powered by organic life. People battling and killing each other like always, but with the added bonus of their wars being fueled by the lives of others. You could build an empire – no, several empires – on powers like that. Raising humans with the express purpose of using them as fuel. Releasing something like _that_ into the wild would be an unimaginably destructive act. No precedent existed for destruction on that scale. The great big world out there, already so violent and forceful, would turn into a heaving nightmare of clashing wills. And through it all, Eren and Armin would be the ones remembered for starting it. Gods or monsters or both, they could never hope be forgotten. What a dreadful fate! He would rather that death claimed them both at that instant than for them to be cursed with a legacy like that.

The great wheel of History now revolved around a small cottage where two youths, much too attached to one another, had only wanted to spend their days together. The wheel spares no one. Everyone is impaled upon its spokes and brought along for the ride.

It would be so easy to just ride along with events, let everything take its course. Eren would never do anything to him – it was everyone else who had reason to worry. He could just fall back into the other man’s waiting arms, letting Eren take care of everything like he wanted to. Hadn’t Armin deserved that at least? Ever since he was a child, it had been the same thing over and over again. Staying up late to perfect his homework, keeping his room in perfect order, every chore performed on time according to instructions, doing everything the adults told him to. _yes_ _father_ _no_ _father_ _of course_ _mother_ _no I don’t have any objections I_ _exist_ _only to serve_. He wondered if he maybe should give up out of sheer spite. _n_ _o, I won’t let myself be ruled by the wants of everyone else the world out there can destroy itself for all I care as long as I have my_ _one thing, my_ _sweet sinner I_ _really don’t_ _care_ _unfortunately_ _. sorry everyone,_ _sorry to be a disappointment again._

Couldn’t he be bad, just this once? He had spent his whole life taking responsibility, and now he was asked to assume one of the biggest tasks anyone had ever had to. Couldn’t whoever was in charge of the universe see that Armin Arlert was tired of always cleaning up its messes? Why couldn’t just… _someone else do it?_

He sighed, and saw that he’d cut the last leaf of belladonna off its stem – he last ingredient of the vomiting potion. He went inside to mix it.

Eren slept soundly, a line of drool going from his mouth to the pillow. Armin had moved him to their bed after slipping the sleeping potion into his wine. Armin thought he looked as beautiful as always. He wanted to get one last look at him before it could all change, irrevocably, forever.

* * *

Eren retched and choked, feeling like his interior was turning itself inside out. Bile built up in his mouth and even as he tried to keep it down, letting all that was inside his stomach out in a bucket that Armin had, eerily prescient, brought to the side of the bed. He felt a big clump of matter, larger than anything he had ever felt inside himself before, make its way up his throat and he didn’t even have the time to panic before he saw the white eel(?) in the bottom of the bucket, squirming pathetically. It was much thicker than it had been when he found it and he felt his mouth tearing as he coughed it up. This would probably hurt for days. Armin moved quickly, having taken one of Eren’s daggers and speared the quivering eel on its sharp point. He brought it out of the bucket and onto the floor where he sat and moved his arm in quick motion – stabbing it again and pressing the blade down through its heart. It bled blood that was so dark it was almost black and made a pitiful attempt at worming itself off the point of the dagger, but it was futile. It made one last small twitch, and was still.

Armin looked at his bedridden lover – some drops of blood had spilled on Armin’s white shirt.

“Eren, you stupid, stupid fool. Why do I always have to fix the things you've destroyed...”

Eren tried to speak, but his voice was raspy and thin. Armin had brought a cloth and a glass of water to the bedside table – always mindful. Eren wiped his puke-stained mouth with it and tried clearing his throat. Meanwhile, Armin was starting to cut up the eel-thing into multiple little pieces.

“I want to prevent this thing from ever doing any more damage. We should spread its pieces far away from one another. One in the river, one in the forest, one under a rock. And so on.”

Eren coughed and drained the glass to clean his mouth of the unclean taste. He made another attempt at speaking. This time it went better.

“...Sentient beings have richer, more powerful life forces. You can get weeks of juice out of a single human, while even a big animal like a bear would only give you a couple of hours. That was why I did it, it told me everything...”

“And you just went along with it? How many people did you kill, exactly?”

“Only 3 from what I can remember. I guess you saw me kill that lady last night. There was also a farmhand who lived in a shack right on the edge of the woods, and a lone hunter. I was smart like you, Armin, I only picked people who were alone and didn’t have any witnesses. And their remains are far, far underground.”

“But won’t their loved ones discover that they’re gone and figure out they’ve been killed eventually?”

“I never thought that would ever be an issue since I could just deal with anyone who bothered us. Of course, now that I don’t have _that_ anymore, we’re more vulnerable.”

“Well, I don’t want to wait until they piece together the puzzle. We should pack up and leave this place. We can move out of the country, change our names. There is a seaside republic bordering us who don’t bother checking immigrants’ papers too closely as long as they can pay. It won’t be as pretty as it is here, but what can we do when we’re on the run from the law...”

“So you don’t want to turn me in or anything? Ditch me since I’m such a _bad_ person? I've never been as good as you, Armin...”

“No Eren, I… don’t. They’d probably consider me a collaborator anyway since I didn’t do anything to stop it. And besides...”

He dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around Eren. His lover, his tormentor, his knight in red armor. He wanted to tie a red string to him so they could never leave each other’s side.

“I don’t want to let you go. I want to stay with you no matter what you’ve done. Please, Eren...”

Armin felt heat rise to his face. Tears started stinging his eyes. All the emotions he’d kept supressed were starting to rise to the surface, doing untold damage. He had been with Eren for 10 years and the strong yet wiry man with long dark hair and a face that so often wore a scowl could still overwhelm him, making him feel like a schoolboy in the presence of a stern principal.

Eren cupped Armin’s face with his hand to study it. He looked so adorable when he begged. He moved it to the back of his head and moved him in for a deep kiss, making it last good and long so Armin would have trouble breathing. When he was done, Eren smirked.

“Admit it. You’d be bored out of your skull if you didn’t have me around.”

Armin exhaled. He wanted this long day to come to an end – he hadn’t been able to sleep all night and the adrenaline he was running on was rapidly running out.

“You’re right.”

He leaned onto Eren’s chest, holding him.

“I would be.”


End file.
